I’ve been thinking about literary fiction. As opposed to mainstream, which is what most of us read. I was an English major and then an English teacher and you would think I would be big on literary novels. Well, I am, somewhat. I read those too and admire them. Guess I should give some examples of the literary genre I have liked: Olive Kitteridge by E. Strout; The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd; anything by Anne Tyler; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by D. Eggers. Wally Lamb. Alice Walker. Marilyn Robinson. And so on. But what I gravitate to are genre novels, especially dark crime books. I’ve loved J. D. Robb’s In Death series. And the Brotherhood vampire series by J. R. Ward. And the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries by C.S. Harris. Some romances are delicious too – I particularly appreciate Judith Ivory’s historicals.

So what does it say about readers who prefer the lower brow –not all the way low-brow, but according to the Elite Reading Police, lower than literary? Do we want a less cerebral experience? Or simply a greater distance between our own lives and the fictional world so that our escape from reality for a few hours is more complete?

One criterion for literary is a fineness of language. More beautiful flow. More sophisticated syntax. But I’ve read some lovely, memorable passages in genre fiction too. Maybe it’s all about marketing.

My aspiration as a writer: to write literary quality in genre fiction. So there. It may take me until twenty or thirty years past my death, but I’m a trying.